


Broken Glass

by X_Kartoffel_X



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Character Death, Gen, slash if you squint hard enough, war flashback
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/X_Kartoffel_X/pseuds/X_Kartoffel_X
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The eyes of a killer. That’s what Hughes had once said. Perhaps that’s what they had all seen today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Glass

**Author's Note:**

>  Basically Roy angst set after the Maria Ross fiasco. I was struck with a horrible need to write drunk, sad Roy, suffering after everything that had been happening to him at this point in the series.
> 
> This was written in a few short hours quite late at night so sorry for any dip in quality.

The glass is cold, heavy in his hand; grounding. Comforting.

It has been a rough day. The worst in a while. He can still see the fear that had flickered through her eyes, when he had called out to her in that alleyway. And even knowing that he was never going to-

The smell of smoke and burning flesh is still clogging his lungs.

Inhuman is just one of the slurs he has heard muttered alongside his own name, since Ishval - she had probably known of that, too. The Flame Alchemist was a name to fear.

There's condensation seeping through the fabric of the glove that covers his fingertips, the ice floating inside the amber-filled glass tunefully chiming against its container as it sways a little in his grasp. It is enough to attract his gaze, if briefly, from where it had been fixed upon the rays of moonlight flickering through the window panes - eery beams cutting through the otherwise dark outstretch of the room before him.

He knows he should have put the lights on long ago, and yet...

Darkness is a comfort. Darkness swallows the ghosts of flames that dance in the back of his mind.

The reek of burning flesh is clinging to his clothes; somewhere in the twisted recesses of his thoughts, he sees charred limbs. Blistered, puckered skin peeling back from bubbling veins and blackened arteries-

The eyes of a killer. That's what Hughes had once said. Perhaps that's what they had all seen today.

There's a pain across his temples - a migraine, perhaps. His fingers grip the glass a little tighter as he tips the rim to his lips. He knocks his head against the plush leather of the chair at his back.

The light in the room seems dimmer as the empty glass clinks against the heavy oak desk - beams now unclear to his blurring vision. It could almost be the alleyway again, and that, he cannot have - not now.

With heavy eyelids threatening to close, Roy raises a hand to his brow and rubs the dull ache that lingers there. He had hoped the alcohol in his veins might have rid him of this discomfort. Pain. The headache had come with the angry, accusing shouts of the Elric brothers. With Ed's face, when they discovered his figure looming over that mangled, unrecognisable mess of Alcehmically-forged flesh that he had burned without a single flicker of doubt-

It's the smell alone that has unsettled him so.

Hours spent scrubbing at his coat in the camps during the war, willing and wishing the reek of burning hair and skin - blistered, charred, and his handiwork alone - from the fibres of the garments as if it might rid him of the guilt, too. Hands had bled, scrubbed red and raw, until another had come to cover them, still their mania and sooth his wounds... but it was never enough. The reek never left him. Had crept into his bones and would not leave him be.

He had learned to ignore it, but today...

It's a sour thought, and Roy regrets that they ever had to see such an act. Whether they had known the truth of it, or not... It would have been better if those brothers had never walked upon that scene.

He succumbs to the urge to open his eyes once again, ripped from the dark reprieve that he had so briefly enjoyed; pulled from it by accusing golden eyes, boring into the black expanse like obtrusive sunlight.

Always those eyes, lately.

The room is ever darker around him - edges of his desk blurred and unclear, and he wonders if this darkness is what Hughes saw before the end, too.

Did his vision blur?

Did his limbs feel numb, too?

Did Maria briefly fear that this might be her fate, as well?

The fear in her eyes was a fear he had seen a thousand times before - red irises awash with desperation, boring into him as if they were begging. Pleading.

His hand is shaking a little, unsteady, as he pours whiskey from the bottle onto the diminishing ice in the otherwise empty glass. This will be the last of the night, he assures himself; just one more, to dull his senses enough that he can no longer taste the rotten ash on his tongue. Dim the light of those golden eyes he sees glaring in the darkness.

He can't let this all get to him. There's too much at stake, and too much he has left to do. He hasn't killed anyone, not yet, on this fruitless chase to find Maes' killer, and usurp this corrupt government... he will, of course. Inevitably. More blood will touch his hands before his work is done; more bodies will burn.

More sleepless nights will be spent drowning this pain in whiskey and thinking too much on a face he can no longer see, one that will never smile for him again.

Roy runs a hand down his features, groaning softly beneath his breath.

Golden eyes, accusing and hateful, will not leave him be.

He is tired, and so very worn.

But there's still so much...

Central is a minefield and he's a walking explosive; even one wrong step and he could set off a chain reaction that would see himself and everyone he cares about reduced to ash and rubble.

But then, that has always been a particular skill of his.

The empty room swallows up his hollow laughter like a secret to be kept between the two of them.

Maes would have stopped this behaviour; told him how foolish he was being, and reminded him where his sense of duty lay. But the thing is...

The thing is...

"...onel!"

Maes isn't here any more.

"Colonel!"

Roy blinks into a golden glare, pinning him down from across the desk - amidst the darkness of the room. They don't disperse when he shuts his eyes, and the ache in his mind seems to worsen at this realisation. Again, he wills the visage to fade, wincing in the sudden brightness of the room - when did the lights come on? - in the hopes that the flickering darkness of the moonlight, and the solace of his empty office, will return when he opens them again.

And yet that figure, and the blinding light he always seems to bring with him, returns without pause; Edward Elric is glaring at him from across the oak desk as if he is little more than a worm, and Roy had no idea he had even entered the room. Had not registered his presence at all... how ironic, he muses, that he could have been killed there and then, had it been anyone else. Any of those in Central that he and his team suspected of treason, and he would be a corpse no better than those he had littered across the Ishvalan sands. Then again, there is an air of violence crackling in the air like thunder, and even Roy's dulled senses can recognise that much.

"Looking at those eyes, I'd say you're here to pick a fight, Fullmetal." The words are slurred even to his own ears.

"You..." There's a falter; brief, but enough that Roy notices. Ed is usually so abrupt and unflinching. "Did you expect me to come here with a damn smile on my face?!" He slams his left hand down onto the desk, and Roy's eyes linger on the balled-up fist for a moment, as his own hand sneaks out to gather up the now full glass he had poured just moments before. The hand slams down again, drawing his attention back to Ed's bared teeth. "After what you did to Lieutenant Ross!!"

"What I..." Roy pauses momentarily, to gather his bearings. Of course, Edward thought...

He wonders how his eyes must look, to Ed, right now.

"Oh, you're still angry about that?" He leans back in his chair and takes a drink, tapping the gloved fingers of his left hand on the worn wood of the oaken desk. It's something to draw Ed's attention, so that he might not notice how unsteady the hand that tips the contents of the glass down his throat is. "And here I was expecting you were planning to apologise for back-talking a superior officer."

He can almost hear Ed snap.

The bottle of whiskey shatters against Ed's fist as he flings his automail arm out, scattering shards of splintered glass across the desk. He flings the remains against the wall behind Roy's head. Golden eyes burn him with a fire that could rival his own.

Glancing away from the mess that plasters the wallpaper, and down at the half-empty tumbler in his own grasp, Roy wills the tremble and sway of his fingers to cease. Ed is shaking; seething in a way that Roy has never seen before. With a smirk that he hopes is convincing, Roy drawls; "Not that it probably means much to you, but that was twenty-five years old, Fullmetal."

"And how old was Lieutenant Ross, huh?!" Ed's whole frame is shaking with the effort of keeping his rage in check, and Roy finds it enthralling. Drunken stupor or not, this is the distraction he has been hoping for all night; the anger he can't let out himself, and the loathing he deserves.

It feels like vindication.

"Does it matter?" Ed falters at his words, horrified eyes full of disbelief. Perhaps it's Roy's careless tone, his flat expression. Is his hand still shaking? He can't tell, so he downs the remnants of his glass to slam the tumbler back down on the desk where it won't risk falling from his grip. Ed jumps visibly at the clattering sound. "She was a felon who murdered M..." He couldn't make this personal. "...a member of the Amestrian Military. That's enough."

"How can you say that?!"

"I did my duty as a State Alchemist, and dealt with an escaped criminal. You said yourself that you're a dog of the military, Fullmetal."

He stares across the desk, eyes weary and low-lidded, despite his harsh tone. Perhaps he doesn't mean it to sound so cruel - not when he knows this is all an act - but alcohol is clouding his system and that rage, pouring off Ed's frame like it might suffocate him if unleashed, is almost intoxicating. He taps gloved fingers on the desk, once. Twice. "Wouldn't you have done the same?"

Maes would call him an idiot.

Ed moves like a hurricane; strong and unrelenting. Roy watches as he strides around the desk past the mess that remains of the battered and broken whiskey bottle on the floor. He struggles to register just how fast Ed is moving until there's a fist grappling with the front of his shirt, and a harsh voice hissing out from between gritted teeth.

He almost reels in the face of those golden eyes so close to his own; room spinning behind Ed who seems so solid amongst the chaos.

"You knew Lieutenant Ross, didn't you? Didn't you?!" The first shake is harsh, and rattles Roy's already addled mind; this is all a game of course - none of these accusations are true, in this case - and even so... "Do you really think she would...!?" Even so, each harsh shake is like electricity through his frame. "Didn't you trust her at all?!"

He wonders if those golden eyes looking into his own can see what Maes once saw.

"Don't you trust anyone?!" There's another question that is bitten back before it can cut through the air between them, and when Ed utters his final question - words laced with venom - Roy can see blood beading on his lip where his teeth bit too harshly. He feels fingers tighten against the cotton of his shirt, hears the gears of the automail creak with the strain.

"Would you kill your comrades too... if those bastards told you to?!"

Does Ed see the eyes of a murderer, too, he wonders?

"My hands are already red, Fullmetal." Sometimes, it's easier to be the monster others see you for. "What's one more drop of blood?"

Sometimes, a lie you believe yourself, Roy decides, is the easiest to act out.

Golden eyes search him, but whatever Ed is looking for, he doesn't find it in the bloodshot, heavily-lidded glance that is returned to him.

The grip on Roy's collar loosens abruptly - fabric dropped as if it burns - and Roy feels momentarily dizzy for the freedom. The room is still spinning around them both, and he is not so far gone that he cannot taste the alcohol still on his breath. He's not so inhibited that he doesn't register Ed moving back from him, repulsed. And who could blame him? Who would honestly look upon Roy, after such words, with anything other than revulsion in their minds?

He laughs, choked and broken. "What's wrong, Fullmetal? Were you expecting something else?" And if Ed turns away in disgust at his words, kicks the broken bottle aside as he passes it once more, and pauses to grip the edge of the desk to steady himself for a moment as he moves towards the door... well, then, Roy certainly won't comment. His hand wraps around the glass, still sat upon the desk, and swirls the last dregs of melting ice around with an uneven twist of his wrist.

He'll be alone with his thoughts again, in a moment - ready to drown the regrets of his lies once again-

"You know, serving your country..." the words are soft and almost hopeless. Tired, as if uttered from lips that have murmured such things more than enough already. "It should never mean sacrificing your humanity."

For a moment, Roy almost sees someone else stood where Edward Elric now stands, staring back towards him from over his shoulder - still gripping the edge of the desk as if it holds him to the earth.

Roy's eyes travel back to the glass in his hand, holding it up into the light for a moment to watch the reflections on the water within. "That sounds like something Hughes would have said." When he says it, he means it - fondness that he would never be so honest about if sober - filtering through the words that escape from his lips.

Ed's grip on the desk tightens so much that the wood splinters beneath his automail's grasp; and when Roy looks up to him, startled from his momentary distraction, he barely catches what he thinks is a look of anguish on Ed's features before he turns his face from view. "He'd be disgusted if he knew that you'd done any of this in his name."

He doesn't even bother to close the door behind him, when he leaves; a whirlwind of golden hair and burning red.

Roy is left, dumbfounded, staring in the wake of Ed's last words. By the time he has the sense of mind to call out, the echo of footsteps have long since faded, and the room seems colder for his absence. Roy's gaze travels to the splintered edge of the desk, and the imprint of a harsh hand pressed into the wood. His own fingers reach out to trace the outline - pressing them palm to palm - a gesture his addled mind cannot begin to comprehend.

Or perhaps one it does not wish to just yet.

There's too much at stake, still. For both of them.

The reek of burning flesh is long gone; replaced by the scent of oil and worn leather, and it is a small comfort.

"Maes..."

He laughs, shallow and harsh in the empty room, leaning back in his chair and bringing a hand to his face. His cheeks burn through his glove, and he wishes he could say it was not from shame.

"How is it he's... always right?"

But the silent room offers no response.


End file.
